Steve Wyche of the Washington Post reports:Washington Wizards guard/forward Michael Jordan went off on his teammates after getting blown out 109-83 in Phoenix on Friday night.

"I'm not going to try to save this team," said Jordan after scoring a team-high 14 points. "It's not my job. My job is not to try to carry this team like I did in '84 for the Bulls. We've got young, talented players on this team. If they're going to sit back and expect that I'm going to score 50 points they got a nice little awakening coming up. I told them at halftime, I'm not going to try to carry the team.

"I'm going to move the ball, draw the attention and get you guys the ball. You shoot it. You score it. I'll go rebound and try to play defense but don't expect me to try to put an 'S' on my chest and go out and play for these guys. We've got 14 games left. I'm going to try to enjoy myself. If you guys want to play hard basketball, we'll play hard basketball. If you guys want to take it off, I could be playing golf somewhere."

When he was asked if he would give the Wizards another tongue-lashing like he did after their loss to New York earlier this month, Jordan didn't really add much more.

"I'm not wasting my breath. I'll hold on to my breath. I can do other things with it. I can have a nice cigar."

Jordan wasn't done there. He kept going on.

"The best way for me to go out is to see that someone has to have the passion for the game like I do," Jordan said. "It doesn't have to be winning. I don't want it to be losing but you can lose with passion, you can lose with competition, competitiveness. You can't lose like this. This is disappointing to go out this way. It's one game but if this is any indication of how the next 14 are going to be, good Lord, I need to go home quick."

The Wizards are currently one behind the Milwaukee Bucks for the Eastern Conference's final playoff spot with only 14 games to play.

Still, Jordan thinks some of his teammates are ready to pack it in.

"Why should they [quit]?," Jordan asked. "It's not like they've done anything. I don't think anybody in here [besides me] has won a championship other than [Tyronn] Lue and he was a reserve."

Jordan went on to rant about everyone wanting to be treated the same. It seemed that Kwame Brown was the target of Jordan's final two quotes.

"Everybody wants to be treated the same," Jordan said, almost in scolding terms. "Unfortunately, everybody's not the same. You don't have 12 Michael Jordans in this locker room just like we don't have 12 Kwame Browns. Everybody's different. Everybody's going to be treated differently. If you [get upset] that some guys can make a mistake and another guy can make the same mistake and not get yelled at, that's tough. That's how it comes in this game. You have to live with it, you have to go out there and play with it.

"We've got too many guys worrying about the Joneses next door and they're not doing their jobs. Do your job, don't worry about who's doing their job next door, stay connected and play the game."

Maybe this will light a fire under the Wizards when they play the Golden State Warriors tonight.